Wearable Devices: The Era of Personalized Care

Imagine a device that not only counts daily steps, but also helps manage chronic diseases, improve sleep, or even prevent medical emergencies.

Wearable digital health technologies, such as smartwatches, fitness trackers and specialized medical devices, are revolutionizing healthcare. These innovative tools bring the assessment of important parameters, such as “heart rate”, directly to your fingertips—or, more often, to your wrist—or perform a simple ECG recording (a single channel), making healthcare more accessible, personalized and effective. And this also applies to patients with Cardiomyopathy

How Wearable Devices Are Changing Healthcare

Traditionally, doctors would monitor your health during one-time visits to the clinic. Now, wearable devices can provide critical information and give you a much clearer picture of your health.

These devices are used to manage a wide range of conditions. Here are some examples:

• For Diabetes: Continuous glucose monitors help patients keep track of their blood sugar levels by providing real-time data on the impact of meals or physical activity.
• For Heart Health: Smartwatches with heart rate sensors can detect arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, rapid ventricular arrhythmias. Several models are able to record theECG, which can then be forwarded to your cardiologist and health center
• For Epilepsy: Specialized devices monitor for signs of seizures, alerting caregivers and helping prevent injury during seizures.
• For Mental Health: By analyzing sleep patterns and activity levels, wearables are also supporting the management of conditions such as depression.

These advances are giving patients more control and providing physicians with data to make more informed, accurate decisions.

Advantages and disadvantages for patients

1. Runtime:Imagine being able to monitor your heart rate, activity level, or blood sugar with the same tools your doctor does. These devices provide actionable data that allows you to make lifestyle changes or seek medical attention in a timely manner.
2. Personalized Care:Every person is unique, and wearable devices help tailor care and therapies to each person's specific needs. For example, your doctor can use device data to adjust medications or recommend exercises that fit your lifestyle.
3. Comfort:Wearable devices integrate seamlessly into your daily routine. Unlike traditional tests that require frequent doctor visits, they monitor your health discreetly and with minimal effort on your part.
4. Early Detection:Changes in sleep patterns, heart rate, or physical activity can often signal a problem. Identifying them early can help prevent more serious conditions later.
5. Excessive attention and triggering of anxiety states: Some particularly anxious patients may begin to take numerous readings, triggering states of anxiety and needing reassurance from the doctor, if the device signals excessive slowing of the heartbeat, such as during rest or sleep, or false arrhythmias, as can happen during physical exercise.

Challenges to Overcome

Despite the many advantages and few disadvantages, wearable devices present some challenges:

1. Data Ownership:A key question remains: Who owns the data collected by these devices? Is it the patient, the company that makes the device, or the health system? Many patients do not know how their data is being stored or shared. Experts point to the gap and also the need for clear rules and transparent policies to ensure data privacy and security.
2. Accuracy and False Alarms:While technology is rapidly improving, wearables aren’t perfect. For example, a smartwatch could misinterpret normal heart rhythms as irregular, causing unnecessary anxiety and unnecessary doctor visits.
3. The Digital Divide:Not everyone has equal access to these tools. High costs, lack of internet connectivity, or limited digital skills can exclude many people from the benefits of wearable devices. This gap, known as the “digital divide,” risks leaving behind the most vulnerable patients, such as the elderly.
4. Integration into the Health System:Wearable devices generate a large amount of data, and clinicians need tools to manage and interpret this information efficiently. Ensuring that these devices work well with existing healthcare systems is a relatively large challenge.

Building a Better Future for Wearables

To unlock the full potential of wearable health devices, several steps are needed:

• Educating Patients and Doctors: Both patients and healthcare professionals need training on how to effectively use data from wearable devices.
• Improving Accessibility: Efforts are underway to make these technologies more affordable and easy to use, especially for underserved communities. Public-private partnerships, subsidies, and educational programs could bridge the digital divide.
• Set Standards: Clear guidelines on how wearables communicate with healthcare systems and protect your data are critical. Governments and industry leaders are working to develop universal standards.
• Increase Confidence: Transparency about data use and robust security measures will help patients feel more confident in adopting these technologies.

What awaits us?

As wearable technologies improve, the relationship between patients and healthcare providers may be redefined. For example, a diabetic patient could adjust their diet in real time using data from a blood sugar monitor, or a person at risk of heart failure could receive an alert to consult a doctor before a serious event.

In a patient with cardiomyopathy, maintaining a regular heart rhythm is essential to reduce symptoms and complications. Early detection of conditions such as atrial fibrillation, for example, could prevent complications such as cerebral ischemia (“ictus”) or heart failure.

Additionally, real-time, anonymous data from wearable devices can help public health experts identify and address new problems, such as “an example” of the rise in atrial fibrillation cases in the general population. These devices could also reduce healthcare costs by shifting the focus from treatment to prevention.